I don't know enough about Higgs Boson to rule out the notion that using some ping pong balls, a bag of sugar and a tray from the work canteen isn't a painfully obvious way of explaining it. But certainly a few commenters online were quick to question the striking similarities between the BBC and Guardiandemonstrations.

Updated: The BBC has now added a line crediting The Guardian and Ian Sample:

Jul 04, 2012

More than 50 years ago Peter Higgs and five other theoretical physicists proposed that an invisible field lying across the Universe gives particles their mass, allowing them to clump together to form stars and planets.

According to Prof Higgs's 1964 theory, the field interacts with the tiny particles that make up atoms, and weighs them down so that they do not simply whizz around space at the speed of light.

But in the half-century following the theory, produced independently by the six scientists within a few months of each other, nobody has been able to prove that the Higgs Field really exists.

That's where the so-called "God Particle" comes in. Prof Higgs predicted that the field would have a signature particle, a massive boson. Finding it would point towards the existence of the field.

Jun 23, 2012

Thanks to my obsession with watching vbs.tv at night, hoping to find new episode of Vice Guide to Travel – I stumbled across a mini documentary called Thorium Dream. Nothing has stimulated my “nerd endings” in quite some time as this little documentary did.

Jun 02, 2012

Published on May 31, 2012 by MarsOneProject This movie shows how Mars One plans to establish a human settlement on Mars in 2023. Special appearance by our ambassabor Nobel Prize winner prof. dr. Gerard 't Hooft.

Apr 24, 2012

Published on Mar 14, 2012 by NASAexplorer From year to year, the moon never seems to change. Craters and other formations appear to be permanent now, but the moon didn't always look like this. Thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we now have a better look at some of the moon's history. Learn more in this video!

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10930

Apr 09, 2012

If you've been to a crowded airport, sporting event, or even a kid's birthday party lately, a little peace and quiet might sound like the perfect thing to help you kick back and relax. Just don't let things get too quiet, or you might drive yourself a wee bit insane: the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota can mute 99.99% of all sound, but visiting the silent oasis isn't as calming as you might expect.

Mar 10, 2012

Ault, who was 19 at the time and visiting from southern California, attended the launch with his parents, Bernice and Robert, and his friend Bill Graber. He filmed the event with his Chinon Super 8 film camera while Graber snapped photos.

Like many home movies, the film sat untouched in a box in Ault's house for decades. Until last week, it had been 26 years since he had seen the film, which The Huffington Post licensed from Ault.

Feb 27, 2012

Uploaded by BBC on Dec 31, 2010 More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x1yny

Materials scientist Dr Mark Miodownik reveals that we are now capable of making fibres that, in theory, should be strong enough to support an elevator that could carry objects from the Earth 36,000 km up to space.

Also read: A 'space elevator' by 2050? A Japanese firm would like to take tourists spaceward, to a station connected to a 22,370-mile stretch of cable. Could it happen?

Feb 23, 2012

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

Feb 21, 2012

I recently gave a lecture, screened on the BBC, about quantum theory, in which I pointed out that “everything is connected to everything else”. This is literally true if quantum theory as currently understood is not augmented by new physics. This means that the subatomic constituents of your body are constantly shifting, albeit absolutely imperceptibly, in response to events happening an arbitrarily large distance away; for the sake of argument, let’s say on the other side of the Universe.